Curry Sauce from a Bare-Bones-Kitchen

Photo by Neil Conway

Do you like Thai food but are shit at cooking? Do you have nothing in your kitchen other than peanut butter, an assortment of random condiments and that thing in your fridge that you’re refusing to even touch because it’s so moldy it’s become its own life form with a family and a pension? Then you, my friend, have come to a safe place.

This is a sauce that goes on everything. I usually buy a box of frozen meatballs, cook those and throw them in, but you could throw anything in there: leftover chicken, vegetables, mashed potatoes, rice, those people-meat pies from Game of Thrones. It’s essentially the sauce that goes on every curry you’ve ever had, so just follow your heart. These ingredients will last forever—I’ve had the same curry paste since first year. This curry recipe is awesome because you can make it when you’ve forgotten that humans require food for survival—the ingredients will always be in your fridge behind the old cans of beer.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons red curry paste (careful if you buy the spicy stuff, this sucker can get hot)

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 can coconut milk (make sure you own a can opener. I have made this mistake)

2 tablespoons peanut butter

Salt/pepper

Some chopped cilantro

A main dish to put it on

Directions:

Put a large pot on medium/high heat and add the sesame oil.

Add the curry paste to the sesame oil and melt it a little. It doesn’t have to be totally melted, but it takes longer to melt once everything else is added so you might as well start now. (It doesn’t melt in the sense of “becomes liquid”, it more just turns into less stiff paste. If this part takes more than 2 minutes, move on.)

Add peanut butter and melt it a little too (same note as above).

Pour in the whole can of coconut milk and whisk everything together. There will be bits of curry paste and peanut butter floating around; don’t worry, they’ll melt.

Wait for this thing to start bubbling and then turn down the heat a little.

Let it sit for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. This would be a good time to get together whatever you’re putting it on.

When time’s up, take it off the heat and let it sit for at least 5 minutes. This doesn’t sound important but it makes the sauce thicken a little. If you refrigerate this sauce then reheat it for leftovers it gets really thick, so that’s pretty fun.

Add in whatever main dish you want the sauce to go on, plus the cilantro. Begin bragging to your friends about your culinary dominance.